I only remember two cases in which a story was volunteered to me, and, although I have often tried the experiment, I cannot call to mind even a single instance in which leading questions (as the lawyers call them) on my part, addressed to a sitter, ever produced any result worth recording.

Over and over again, I have been disastrously successful in encouraging dull people to weary me.

But the clever people who have something interesting to say, seem, so far as I have observed them, to acknowledge no other stimulant than chance.

For every story which I propose including in the present collection, excepting one, I have been indebted, in the first instance, to the capricious influence of the same chance.

Something my sitter has seen about me, something I have remarked in my sitter, or in the room in which I take the likeness, or in the neighborhood through which I pass on my way to work, has suggested the necessary association, or has started the right train of recollections, and then the story appeared to begin of its own accord.